And Then There Was Silence
by LeonaWriter
Summary: In a universe where the Master wasn't dragged back into the Time War with Gallifrey and instead lost the drums in his head, he began to travel with the Doctor. And then, of course, there was Amy. No pairings. Drabbles set from End of Time on, no order.
1. FS, EH, BB

And Then... There Was Silence.

AN: Written to illustrate a roleplay version of the Master. A version in which he somehow survives through the End of Time, but because of some event or other comes out the other end without the drums. And thus, without a TARDIS of his own, is somewhat forced to travel with the Doctor if he wants to travel at all. Drabbles aren't in any particular order.

...

Flesh and Stone  
The Doctor... was currently in the process of being ravished by his assistant. Amy Pond, once upon a time Amelia Pond. And the Master was leaning against the TARDIS, smirking and taking it all in.

"Oi, you- aren't you - won't you - Amy, no, stop, you don't want this - I thought you were... and are you going to just stand there _watching_, or something?"

Finally, Pond realised - or perhaps remembered - that there was a third member of their party. Shame.

"Oh, yes. Do you know, I haven't seen the Doctor this flustered in, oh, a long, long time? Don't mind me, please - I'm just enjoying the view!"

...

Eleventh Hour  
-And with one last fizzle and pop and _bang!_, the sonic screwdriver was no more. While the Doctor bemoaned the loss of his glorified lockpick, the Master meanwhile simply stared, wondering at his stupidity.

"That was the only piece of alien technology on the planet that we could actually _use _right now, and you've just _blown it up_?"

"Not on purpose!" said the Doctor, immediately defensive and taken aback. "Besides, didn't you have that laser thingy of yours?"

"No... it's hardly as though I was resurrected with a laser screwdriver in my pocket!" he said, sarcasm dripping from his every word.

"It was just an idea!"

"A bad one, Doctor. Just like your last one."

"Oh, stop worrying so much. I'm thinking up a plan."

"A _plan? _Doctor, you _had _a sonic screwdriver!"

Suddenly, the Doctor turned around to face the Master, holding up a finger in front of his face in a semi-threatening, but almost _confused, _manner.

"Remind me again why you're even here, and why you're helping me."

"Because _you _got us stuck here, and with your TARDIS - the only TARDIS in _existence _- not properly functional yet even, I'm _stuck _here just as much as you are until this has all blown over!"

"...Oh. Yes. Well, I suppose there is that..."

A few meters away, Rory leaned over to speak to Amy as the Doctor started walking purposefully off in a certain direction.

"...you never mentioned the other crazy guy in any of your stories."

"Well that's because I never saw the other crazy guy! I mean, maybe he knocked his head or something when the thing went sideways - I don't know. How should I know?"

"I can hear you!" Called back the Master cheerfully, not breaking his stride as he followed casually after the Doctor. Rory and Amy shared a look, and set off to do the same.

...

The Beast Below  
"...and then I'll have to find a new name for myself. Because I won't be the Doctor any more."

The Master scoffed. "Oh, for goodness' sake - if you're being that dramatic about it, then you could let me."

He was promptly shot down by a sharp, cold and angry look from the Doctor.

"No. No, I won't let you anywhere near this. I let you travel with me, but at the very least, this deserves to be done with compassion. Something I somehow doubt you understand quite yet. So if you don't mind, I think I'll decline on that offer."

"Be like that, then."

"Don't worry - I will."

There was a short, terse pause.

"...Doctor!" And there went Amelia. "I think I know what to do. Stop - stop, now!"

...

AN: Please bear in mind that I didn't have scripts for any of these. So the actual lines of some of the characters might be very, very off. I'll probably be posting more of these up as I come up with them.


	2. And So We Meet Again

And Then... There Was Silence

AN: Out of continuity, but set somewhere between Victory of the Daleks and Time of Angels, I suppose. Since there's no Rory. And idea that came to me when I started wondering what any past companions might think of all this crazy insanity.

...

And So We Meet Again

Martha watched with what she'd readily call nostalgia as the blue police box landed in the middle of the street. Once again, she'd called him up, and once again he'd appeared for her – all right, maybe not for her, but for Earth. Besides, she had Mickey now. The box looked different, with a new coat of paint and a St. John Ambulance sticker on the door, but it was still the same old TARDIS. The Doctor had sounded different, and there'd definitely been someone else in there with him, but she supposed that was good. Much better than the almost broken person who'd saved her life the last time she'd seen him.

The wheezing stopped, and a few seconds later out came a man with dark brown hair that flopped over on one side of his face, dressed in a suit with suspenders and a bow tie. He smiled widely the moment he saw her.

"Martha! Oh, it's good to see you again..."

"Doctor?"

"I told you I'd changed, didn't I?"

"Doctor! Oh, I've missed you too!" And she proceeded to envelope the Doctor in a short but meaningful hug, before letting go to have a good proper look at him.

Unfortunately, this meant that she was fully able to see the next person to come out of the TARDIS.

"Doctor. What is _he_ doing here?"

"He? He who?" The Doctor turned around to where the Master was standing. And by the looks of things, was decidedly unsurprised. "Oh, him. Would you believe me if I said he follows me around like a lost puppy nowadays?"

"No," said Martha. "I wouldn't."

"Good. Because I _don't_."

And then came yet another face out of the TARDIS, this time a redheaded girl who looked to be in her twenties dressed in a short brown jacket, a bright red top and a short skirt.

"Oh," said the new arrival in a silky, condescending voice, "he _so_ is."

The Master stopped, frozen, then turned around to face the redhead looking just that side of angry while the Doctor watched on, bemused.

"Oh, Amelia. I'm _so_ really not."

As 'Amelia' rolled her eyes, Martha blinked, and sidled further up to the Doctor.

"...Am I missing something, here? Or... what?"

"Hm, probably, yeah. Nothing to worry about, though."

He sounded suspiciously cheerful. Martha wondered whether or not it would be safer simply not to ask.


	3. Vincent and the Doctor

And Then... There Was Silence

Vincent and the Doctor (Noise)

AN: There's another one that's going to come up later that'll explain a small portion of this.

...

The Doctor had gone first into the TARDIS, and Amy had followed, with Vincent Van Gogh. It hadn't taken long for the artist to start asking questions and get told not to touch something.

"And that one? What does that one do?"

The Doctor smiled. "This one," he said, "plays soothing music. See?"

He pressed the button, fully expecting to hear soothing, classical Earth-type music start to emanate from the TARDIS control room, adding to the ambient thrum of the ship.

What he hadn't been expecting had been the meticulous strains of what sounded like, to any twenty-first century onlooker, various songs by the Scissor Sisters, Queen and assorted other bands of that era belting out at a distinctly _un_-soothing rate of decibels. The Doctor's eyes immediately widened, and he hit the button again, and the overwhelming noise abruptly ceased. Except for the fact that now, the throbbing bass notes coming at them through the floor and the somewhat more far-off sounds of what they'd just heard were a lot more obvious, and less likely to be simply pushed away to the backs of their minds as simply another strange thing that the TARDIS threw at them from time to time.

For a moment the Doctor simply stood there, while Vincent looked confused and Amy looked like she was trying not to laugh. Then, he pointed abruptly at Amy, who snapped to some sort of attention.

"I," he said, "am going to go and sort that racket out. You – stay here, and don't touch anything. Either of you. At all. Got me?"

He stalked off in the direction of the noise after that, and for a few long minutes nothing more was heard of him. The two left in the control room spent the time in an uncomfortable silence, not exactly knowing what to expect, or what to say.

Then, there was... what sounded like the Doctor, raising his voice only _just_ louder than the music.

"_I said, you could at least turn it down! I don't care what your reasons were, _I_ can't think in this!_"

"_And?_"

Oh, the unmistakable dulcet tones of the Master.

"_It's my TARDIS!_" The Doctor came back with, sounding thoroughly put out. Moments later, the din came to a abrupt cessation.

A short while after that, footsteps and arguing could be heard coming closer and louder as they came nearer to the control room.

"I was bored."

"That's no excuse. And besides, you have that iPod thingy, don't you? Good for pounding unused soundwaves straight into the brain."

"But nowhere near so good at playing as many songs at the same time."

"Yeah, but was that really the kind of impression you wanted to have on_ Vincent Van Gogh_?"

And finally, they were visible as they came through the last corridor, to reveal the Doctor, and the Master following only a hair's breadth behind, hands shoved into the currently anachronistic hoodie worn over the more acceptable-for-the-era suit trousers and shirt.

He stopped in light of Amy's 'kind of amused but really _not'_ raised eyebrow. Or rather, that just happened to be also in his line of sight, as the Master had set his eyes on the legendary artist standing beside her and still making eyes at anything and everything.

"Oh," he said, as the Doctor brushed past to start up the engines for travel. "Hello!" And then he was over where the Doctor was, trying not to lose his balance as, once again, the temperamental time machine jolted to and fro. "_Please_ don't tell me you just decided that you'd take someone like _him_ in as a replacement!"

The words were hissed, and if the artist in question hadn't been so busy wondering at what was going on, he might have thought he had cause for taking offence, and Amy might have wondered who he'd be replacing.

But since there were other things going on at the time, neither of them did. And the Doctor went on to give the Master a rather scathing look.

"Of _course _not!"

...

AN: ...submitted as one chapter on its own because it grew long enough to. And because.


	4. End of Time

And Then... There Was Silence

The End of Time

AN: No Eleven, but does come with added Ten and Wilf.

...

The Doctor stumbled out of the radiation chamber, holding onto the frame with one hand and holding the other in front of him, the golden glow of the regenerative energies already flowing through him, flickering under the surface of his skin. He let out a heavy breath, hearing even clearer now the sound of the obviously still alive Master, laughing insanely and still in the same place he'd been in after collapsing when Gallifrey had returned to the Time War, locked once more. Still alive, but for the life of him, he couldn't bring to mind the will to think up some sort of theory as to why, or how. Only a spreading mix of anger and hurt and resentment and relief settling in his stomach that caused him to slowly slide himself down, whereupon he rested his head back against the hard, see-through wall.

He could hear Wilf coming closer, hesitantly but stubbornly. For a moment he thought of warning the man away – the Master was still there, still dangerous, after all – but he knew what the dangers were. He'd been there, for all of it. And so he didn't protest when Donna Noble's grandfather gingerly sat himself next to him, careful of the shattered glass that had flown everywhere as a result of the Doctor's extraordinary entrance through the roof.

For a small few moments, there was silence between them. They both knew, more or less, what had happened to the Doctor, and the consequences – what was going to happen. That, they did not need to talk about. 'Are you all right' in this instance, simply wouldn't do. And yet at the same time, they understood that. Wilf hadn't asked for what the Doctor had given him, but, even though it may have seemed grudgingly, the Doctor had given it anyway.

The Doctor sucked in a breath.

"So," he said. Breaking the silence. "What do you think I should do with him?"

'Him' being the Master, still unaware of their conversation. Tiring already, although trying not to take any notice of it.

Wilf looked at the Doctor.

"That man tried to kill Donna," he said. "He tried to kill my little girl."

The Doctor breathed, and thought of Donna, and how the Master had inadvertently almost burnt up her mind by making her remember without even realising it. He thought of Jenny, who had died in his arms.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I know."

But Wilf was still looking at him, intently and with those eyes that Donna had inherited from him, that way of looking at, and through, a person.

"But you're going to look after him anyway, aren't you." Not a question, no hate, and no resentment. Simply a stated fact – that was what was going to happen. "Because that's what you do, isn't it, Doctor? You fix people. Look after them. You're not perfect – no one is. But you try. You wouldn't be you if you didn't try."

At first the Doctor had looked away, not wanting to face up to the possibilities that might occur from his choices, uncertain, but then he laughed. Not at all like the Master's earlier laughter, this – gentle, soft and full of a sort of nostalgic feeling.

"Wilfred Mott," he said, with something more in his tone than simple respect. "You're amazing, you are. You haven't even known me that long, and look at you. You already know me so well."

...

A few minutes later, as the Doctor walked over to where the Master was sitting, glass crunching underfoot and acting as a warning system to the man who he still didn't trust. The Master looked up, smirking in private victory, and perhaps the only one that the Doctor would never wish to take away from him.

Rassilon... the one who had founded created so many of the integral parts of Time Lord culture, had done that, to the Master. To the one who had once been the Doctor's friend in a lifetime long ago, far away, and never entirely forgotten.

Hands in pockets and face showing its proof of his regeneration in progress, he cleared his throat, obviously uncomfortable.

"..._What_?"

The Doctor almost smiled. Half dead, demeaned, the last of their kind and having just managed to both save the Doctor's life and save Earth – albeit incidentally – the Master was still able to inject the expected amount of patronising hatred and bored, impatient resignation into one word. Still the same old Master. By this point, it would be wrong if he reacted in any other way.

"...Are you all right?"

The Master laughed again, not just insane but seeming to find something absolutely hilarious in the Doctor's statement.

"All right? I almost had _Gallifrey_ back, Doctor! Almost had the Time Lords within my grasp, and they wouldn't even take responsibility for what they'd created! _Me_! But all right? Oh, Doctor – I feel so _alive_."

The Doctor refused to flinch. They both knew that he was dying. Dying, and it hadn't even been the Master's fault.

The Master smiled widely and spread his arms. "The link is _broken_, Doctor! Do you even know what that _means_?"

For a moment the Doctor stared. Then, as the Master laughed again, he realised, his expression going between shocked and guarded in an instant.

"The drums," he said, in wonder. "The drums are gone."

This changed... everything. Everything and nothing and created possibilities and futures and paths that he had never before had the courage to look down. The link was broken, Gallifrey could never return, not ever, and now, the Master was no more and no less than the Doctor himself, except for the fact that the man was still clearly not entirely sane.

"Give the man a medal – _yes_. Ah, the sweet _silence!_" He said, shouting that last word to the room at large. The Doctor didn't react, too used to the mood swings by now to be swayed by them. "And?" The Master stood, on not completely stable legs. "Here's the big question – what are you going to do with me now? Imprison me in the TARDIS? Leave me in the care of your _friends_? Drop me off on some forsaken rock in the middle of nowhere? No, wait, that's _here_."

"Oh, don't go off on that..." The Doctor sighed, too tired to take the Master up on his jabs. Instead, he held out a hand. "Come with me."

"Did that radiation just do something to your head? Because I've got this weird feeling that we've _had this conversation before_."

"I know. And I'm still offering."

The Master narrowed his eyes. "And what if I refuse?"

"Then you get to stay here. Or do whatever you like. So long as it doesn't mean trying to destroy humanity again."

"There's a catch. There's always a catch – you wouldn't just let me go that easily." He'd be disappointed if the Doctor did. There'd be no _fun_ in it.

"Humanity knows who you are," the Doctor said after a moment's breath. "If you stayed here, without a TARDIS, then you might be able to get away to somewhere else. But in the state you're in, after all that you've done here? I doubt it, Master. So just this once, would you let me help?"

"A word, Doctor – _no_. I don't want your help, and I don't need your help, and if there's even a _chance_ that I could get away without your interference, I'd _take_ it. No questions asked, no hesitation, no delay!"

The Doctor's hand was still held out, his expression unchanging. "Then why are you still here?" The Master's face, on the other hand, wasn't so perfectly disguised when it came to his emotions. He never had been, and it showed in this incarnation even more than ever before. "Why not just walk out of here, leave all of this behind? If you can, do it. I won't stop you."

"I can! I..." The silence echoed in the Master's head and the words of the conversation reverberated, as his mind searched instinctively for something to fill the sudden void. One. Two. Three. Four. The last time he had heard the beat, he had been shouting it at its originator. _One. Two. Three. Four_. His hands went to his head – they were only _words_, not the drums that had called him to the battle time after time after time...

Hands. A hand, on his shoulder. The Doctor's hand. And for the first time in their conversation, there was concern, real worry in the other Time Lord. Too bad the Master didn't appreciate it.

"I can _help_ you. I _want_ to help you. But I can only do – do _anything_, if you let me." The Doctor paused, but only for an instant. "Come with me."

_It doesn't even have to be what he wants. I could escape, get away, the next planet, next time zone. If he's not watching, anything could happen. I took the TARDIS from him once. I could do it again. Take a chunk of coral, grow my own – only a Type 40, but all the others are dead, dead and gone and I don't have any choice_...

The Doctor, waiting patiently for an answer. The human, whose gun – gun! The Doctor never used guns! – had defeated his plan and saved them all by destroying the link, the white point star. And in the TARDIS, the things he could do... in the shadows, he smiled. And it faltered. The drums, instead of rising along with his intent, did nothing at all.

Because they weren't there any more. Now, it was only him, only his insanity, him and the Doctor and the TARDIS.

"Do you remember, Doctor? The first time you ever said that." _Two boys, or at least that's how they looked. Only a dream, a hope for freedom from the stifling airs and graces and duties. But it was something to aim for. Only when the younger Doctor finally managed it, his old self had been left behind_. "And just look at us now, Doctor. Look at us now."

...

AN: Unsaid things = The Master is stable due to Rassilon Gloving him back to normal. That way, Rassilon got less Lightning of Doom. Master has no drums because Gallifrey is now permanently back in the Time Lock, and there is no more possibility of a link back there.

I may or may not go on to do some of the later bits from this episode, but they'd mostly be that the Master's recovering physically and mentally in the TARDIS. He had just been caught in a brink between living and dying for at least a couple of days, after all.

...I really liked writing the bit with Wilf best. Especially his first line.


	5. Big Bang

And Then... There Was Silence

The Big Bang

AN: Was still trying to figure out how to fit him in when writing the first. Still haven't finished writing anything else, so you get this. As you may've noticed, they're posted in the order I've written them in.

...

They were gathered around the Pandorica. The companions and allies of the Doctor as the other Time Lord sat there, not quite dead. The feel of him was stable in the Master's head, too, but... weak. Which was strange; he had often thought of the Doctor as a fool, as a coward, but never weak.

And yet there he was, he and Pond and Rory and River – oh, such an interesting woman, she was – and they were all so sad. Poor Doctor. Even though this was the suicidal plan the Doctor himself had come up with.

If the Doctor wanted to erase himself from reality itself, then the Master wasn't going to stand in his way.

At least, that's what he thought right up until his old enemy started to smile, just so. He was in the position of power, here – the Doctor was bound into the Pandorica, and the Master would still exist long after the Doctor had ceased to be. He stalked over to him to say so while looming over the other's seated form.

It didn't exactly seem to bother the Doctor, however, as he only leaned forward, to speak haltingly in the Master's ear.

"I will, won't I?" he said. "And just what will that... do to you?"

The Master looked at him incredulously. He didn't need the Doctor. If the Doctor never was and never had been, then he wouldn't, and the TARDIS would be his, and Gallifrey might even be there, the Time War changed and altered due to the large part that the Doctor had, ironically, played in it.

"How do you think you got here, then?" asked the Doctor, his expression, behind the pain and the exhaustion and the everything else, one of a co-conspirator. "Here, out in the universe, seeing everything and getting involved?"

The Master frowned, not entirely sure where this was going.

"I'd be ruling. I'd have found a way out. I'm the _Master_. It's what I _do_."

And then, the Doctor did something that he couldn't have anticipated – he started to laugh. Not exactly strong laughter, but even so. It grated.

"What? What is so funny? Do you find something about what I said _amusing_, Mr I'll-Never-Even-Have-Been-Born?"

"Oh, no. No, no, no." The Doctor paused for breath, and in that moment, they could all but hear the others watching them from the silence and their held breaths. "Do you remember, what we were like? Back on Gallifrey. Before all of this, before any of it." He did, but he didn't see what that had to do with anything. "No me, Master. No," and there he took a pained breath and continued with a lower voice, "no Theta Sigma, egging you on. No Deca. Just some sort of. . . variation on nine."

The possibilities, now that they'd been presented to him, laid themselves out in futures and pasts and timelines.

The Master, not even the Master, but his younger self. Koschei. Not his real name, just as Theta had been just as much a nickname for the Doctor. Alone among his peers, none seeing how much more there was than just a life of duty. No mutiny, no equal, no one to pit his wits against. Just someone else in red at the end of the world, if that ever came, who lived out his lengthy and boring life in duty, because he didn't know any better. To rule, perhaps, but never to conquer, never any satisfaction in his reign.

He sneered.

"Vain, aren't you?" he said, gritting the words out.

The Doctor only smiled again.

"You deserve better," he said.

The Master stood back, a peculiar sneer on his face, which was tilted upwards and away from the Doctor in a certain amount of stubborn, obstinate pride. He wasn't going to back down.

...

Alternate Version That Makes More Sense Is Below~

Amelia was watching nearby, likely not understanding very much at all except for the fact that the Doctor was about to do something completely suicidal – again.

The Master stepped forward with a smirk on his face, his air of superiority back in place at the sight of the Doctor so weak, brought down so low, his TARDIS burning in the sky above. The Doctor would save everyone else, because he was a damned hero. And he would never have existed in the doing of it.

He was just going to stand there, gloating, but then he had the sudden impulse to lean forward, rub it in his face. The great Doctor, and no one would even remember him. Like as not, the universe would simply snap back into place, as though nothing was wrong and like no one had ever needed him.

The hands reaching out for the sides of his head, then, came as a bit of a surprise, and it was all of the distraction that the Doctor needed to put in a single command. Or plea, even. Just one word.

_Run_.

The Master, once he was released, glared at the smirking Time Lord in the Pandorica. Hopefully, the message of '_I hate you'_ would ring loud and clear. He didn't like being told what to do.

Even if he had been – not scared, never scared – but maybe just a little worried, at where he'd be once everything was over.

_Run_.

His feet were itching already, as soon as the Pandorica took off towards the burning up TARDIS after the Doctor had said goodbye to Pond.

_Run_, he'd been told. And oh, he wanted to. Anywhere but here.

...

AN: Um. The first one was written because I liked the idea of seeing a timeline where the Doctor wasn't in the Master's life. It turned out like that, but I later realised that it was out of character for the Doctor (sort of) and definitely for the Master. I still liked it, though, and the ideas brought up in it are going to return.

The second one came about because I later re-watched the Big Bang again, and noticed how the Doctor spoke to Amy. Realised he wouldn't have tried encouraging one person and pushing another away. But he could plant a suggestion in, just in case. This will be plot-relevant.

This takes place after (plot-wise, not timeline-wise) a scene based on Pandorica Opens/Big Bang. I haven't written it yet, though.


	6. Who'd have sonic?

And Then... There Was Silence

Who'd Have Sonic?

AN: Three scenes in the life of the Master's laser. Mark II.

...

The Master stormed down the TARDIS corridors, heels clicking a staccato beat and his free hand tapping out a familiar - if hated - rhythm on his leg as he went in search of the Doctor. To his own internal and infinitely more reliable body clock, it was well into the early hours of the morning, or at least that was what the TARDIS said it should be. Thus, it was unlikely that the stray would still be up, and even less so that she would be out and about in a TARDIS that seemed all too content to willingly misdirect the unwary.

Or, perhaps given his current... situation, the infernal machine simply did it to irritate, annoy and enrage him personally.

He found the Doctor in the main control room, lost to the rest of the world while he fiddled about with who knows what that control was on the console. Without another thought, he thrust his newly built laser screwdriver in the other man's face.

"Your _machine_," he ground out, "has sabotaged my work."

For a moment, the Doctor simply blinked, unsure of what was going on. Then he held out his hand, and the Master handed over the laser device with no small amount of disgust – it was hardly as though he was giving up any advantages.

The Doctor turned it over in his hands, making noises over it and scanning it with the sonic.

"This is beautiful, amazing, brilliant... the ageing circuits have been relegated – still there, but not so... much." He glanced at the Master. "They've been changed, different usage. Mostly inorganic, but... oh. Ooh, that? That," he said, tapping one finger on the place where the latest thing to catch the Doctor's attention lay, "is amazing. How on Earth did you _do_ all of this?"

"I found bits lying around. How did you think I'd make one, out of thin air? And I checked each of those parts. They should have done what I put them in there for. They don't. Your junk pile of a machine sabotaged it!"

"Oi," said the Doctor, poking the laser screwdriver in the Master's direction, "that's my TARDIS you're talking about."

"And that's my screwdriver," he bit out, snatching it back, "useless lock picking light show or not."

"Of course it is!" The Doctor said, still sounding and looking, for whatever insane reason, pleased and proud.

He sighed - the Doctor was giving him a headache. Which would have been understandable if he'd still had his drums, but became just plain _irritating_ when they weren't there.

"Remind me, Doctor. Why was it that I needed to build a new one in the first place? Oh, yes! I remember now – because _you_ wrecked my _last one_."

"Now, hey. That wasn't my fault! I thought you were dead – you _were_ dead."

"And now," the Master retorted, disgust filling his tone once more, "it has a _stun_ _setting_. In fact, there _is_ no kill setting. Nothing of mine has ever had 'stun' as an option. _Ever_."

"Well." said the Doctor. "Maybe there should have been. And in any case – it has now."

He didn't even honour that with a response, only another glare, before he stalked out of the console room again, feeling that if he didn't, he'd shortly be having to resist the urge to test out just how dangerous a stun from a laser screwdriver could be.

...

Rory stared as the Doctor and the one he'd been told went by the title of 'the Master' worked on something weird, complicated looking and set on a plinth of some kind, at around waist height. None of which was very promising.

For one thing, this Master person didn't seem all that nice, if anyone ever thought to ask him – the whole snappy suit thing, which reminded him of that politician that'd been all popular a couple of years ago, and the way he talked, and how he always seemed to be fault-finding about just about anything he saw.

The complicated thing was ominous due to the fact that it was... well, complicated, and both of the aliens that Amy had run away with were working on finding out its secrets.

And then, of course, was the fact that those two hardly ever worked together. At least, not unless it was life or death for either or both, and even then they were snarking at each other.

But he couldn't say any of this, because not only would it distract the two Time Lords, but it would also be pretty pointless.

So instead, he leaned over towards Amy.

"Amy?"

"Hm?" She seemed more than slightly distracted herself, watching them at work.

"What's that thing he's got?" He motioned to the Master, and more importantly, what the Master had in his hands.

Amy looked at him as though he'd just said something stupid. Again. She rolled her eyes playfully and poked him lightly in the shoulder.

"It's his zappy thing. What? Where were you the last times he's used it? Y'know, zappy thing, bzzz, bzzz?"

The Master twitched, and switched the 'zappy thing' off, but still had it held in his hand as he turned around to face them.

"It's called a _laser screwdriver_, you dimwit. And if you don't stop calling it that, then I'll end up zapping _you_."

"Ah," said the Doctor, interrupting the conversation turned argument and getting all of their attention, "probably not the best idea."

"And why would that be?"

"Because we-"

"You."

"-have just unintentionally sent out a signal meaning that something altogether not exactly friendly is heading our way." He rubbed his hands together, and you could be forgiven for thinking that he was actually excited about this. "Run?"

...

Apart from the fact that they'd landed in Wales, there'd been a dubiously suspicious looking SUV parked not too far away from the run down but hardly deserted or abandoned building they'd been aiming at and the fact that he'd been feeling that disgustingly familiar itch in his time sense ever since he'd set foot outside of the Doctor's TARDIS from the moment they'd landed... no, there hadn't been anything odd. Nothing at all to alert him to the fact that they'd just stumbled across a Torchwood investigation in progress.

Or at the very least, nothing to alert the Doctor to the fact. The Master himself had been expecting and anticipating the moment when one of the doors had broken down due to what sounded suspiciously like a strong kick to reveal a rather stunned looking Jack, backed by a woman who looked like she was one of the good captain's little gang of do-gooders.

It took less than a moment – the laser was already out, and the moment of surprise in which no one else was doing anything worked so well to his advantage – and the captain was down.

There was an immediate reaction, of course.

The Doctor started frowning at him, Pond was busy being incredulous, glancing between him and the freak, and the dark haired Welsh woman was looking at all of them with an increasing display of horror, which only made the Doctor frown more.

"Oh, come _on_," he finally said. "It's not as though I killed him. _Again_."

"He didn't even do anything to you!"

"He exists," the Master said, as though this were the most rational explanation anyone could come up with. "And besides, it felt so _good_."

"I wouldn't call that a good reason," she said, warily.

He was going to ask what she would call a good reason, but Pond interrupted him. "Hang on, let me get this straight, you think he's _killed_ him or something?"

"Amy..." The Doctor said her name, putting one hand on her shoulder.

"No, really?"

The Master rolled his eyes, flicked the laser closed and put it back into its pocket.

"No, that would be the last time we met properly. This time, I did worse."

"Worse, than what?" asked the Welsh woman, disbelieving.

"He isn't _dead_. If he'd been killed, then the freak would be back up again by now. No, he's _out cold_. There happens to be a very big difference. For one thing, this thing should leave him with a headache worse than he'd get from one of his death experiences."

Pond gave him a strange look, and backed away a couple of steps.

"All right, I really don't want to know how you know that."

The Doctor sighed, his head finding its way into one of his hands.

"No, Amy," he could be heard muttering behind the hand, "I really don't think you would."

...

AN: The first takes place sometime between Victory of the Daleks and Time of Angels. Second, sometime between Vampires of Venice and Amy's Choice. Third, at some point after Cold Blood for the TARDIS team, and at an unspecified time for Torchwood, since the only other member is Gwen. I figure that the Master would have remembered her, but not bothered to remember her name, since he'd think she was only going to get killed anyway.

The third scene went through three phases. First, they went to the Torchwood Three hub, but that didn't make sense – why would they be there? Then they were out in the middle of nowhere, and Ianto was also there, but for one there was no plot, and for two I don't write Ianto. Plus, timelines. So I started to write what you see.


	7. Crash and Burn

And Then... There Was Silence

End of Time : Crash and Burn

...

The Master first woke up when the Doctor first left the TARDIS.

Which, of course, brought forth the easy conclusion that, at some point between exiting the room in the Naismith mansion and entering the TARDIS, he had fallen unconscious. Which inevitably meant that the Doctor had to have carried him in. Which, he promised himself, he would attempt not to think about too closely.

Said decision both was and wasn't helped by the fact that the silence had become almost tangible; a paradox of sane clarity and a slow, listless refusal to think past certain points.

For the first time since he was eight years old, a time in his life he could remember so, so vividly, he could think without the drums leading him in any given direction. The last time he had been able to do this... he could not remember the last time his head had been like this.

And yet it was as though, even with as many things that his mind wanted to throw at him and show him and come up with all in one go now that it was able to, he could not for the life of him focus on any of them.

Except for a constant, non-threatening but all the same grating noise, a song in his head that _didn't like him_.

It didn't take a genius to guess that it was the Doctor's TARDIS. After all, there was nothing else that could get inside his head, with no more TARDISes other than this one and no more Time Lords other than the Doctor, who was, at this point in time, not inside said TARDIS.

A light clicked on in his brain, and he began to move without thinking, on reflex rather than anything else. Near enough a millennia of play and counter play between them, and they had both learned their part by rote – the Doctor made his move, and the Master plotted around him, acting and reacting, and right now the Master was aiming towards sitting upright on the bed he was in.

He succeeded. But the price was that the blood that had been in his head suddenly found itself feeling much more wanted a slight bit further south, causing him to feel nauseous and have his head throb.

For a moment, it was almost as though the drums had returned. He froze, transfixed, half horrified and half filled with reluctant, guilty, frenzied desire to have them back again. And then – then, he realised that it was just his own pulse beating away at his brain.

He let himself fall back down, feeling every bit as pathetic and disgusting as he ha been thought to be. He was _weak_. He was supposed to be the all-powerful Master, the one who had dominion over all things – and the Master was never weak. Even while dying and more than dead, he had risen up from defeat, become stronger than ever, made it so that the circumstances had always worked out in his favour.

_You are diseased, albeit a disease of our own making_...

In the now-silence, the words echoed around in his head, and a memory, a mere echo of drums, taunted him, giving him the strength needed to lash out and hit several medical-looking things off of a nearby table within his reach.

The aura of distaste in the TARDIS's song grew, if that was possible, but he didn't care – in fact, it worked for him. He didn't like the ship, and he wasn't out to get on the Doctor's good side.

...

The moment the Doctor came back from dropping Wilf off, it only took stepping back inside the TARDIS doors to realise that something had happened, or was still happening, by the sudden barrage of offended, insulted and hurt feelings from the old girl.

It wasn't that much of a leap to guess that it had something to do with the Master. He could only thank his powers of foresight – and the fact that he knew his best friend and enemy so well – that he had thought to lock the medbay doors before leaving even that area in the TARDIS.

Walking back in, however, cause him to understand where the old girl's hurt feelings came from – the place looked wrecked, with equipment everywhere, including even the most improbable to reach places, and every so often there was something lying there, broken.

The Doctor, however, could see one more broken thing, sat hunched over his knees in a way that indicated both a familiar anger and hostility against anyone and everything, and a sickening sort of vulnerability of the like the Doctor hadn't seen in the Master in what felt like forever, so long ago that he couldn't even be sure that he _could _remember such a thing, yet it also reminded him of that night in the wasteland.

That, too, had felt like he had seen his old friend in a completely new way, as if he had been blind and deaf up until that point.

This time, it wasn't the middle of the adventure. The decision had already been made. There was no puzzle to be solved, no enigma to get to the bottom of, no plot to be unravelled and foiled. There was simply the two of them, in the one ship, and both of them broken.

The Doctor was dying, and the Master was a contradiction in so many ways – his body had been dying, he should have been pulled into the Time Lock with the rest of the Time Lords when it was sealed shut again, and yet there he was, recovering in the Doctor's TARDIS. Weak and not making a move.

He sighed, leaning against the doorway, and made to go further in, intending to at least clear up some of the chaos. He was stopped when the Master moved suddenly, a clenching of the hand, a tensing of the features, a twist of the head.

"Don't. Not even a step further." The voice was low, and while it wasn't as hysterical as he'd last heard from the Master, back in the Naismith mansion not so long after the drums had been taken from him and so much of his life revealed for what it was, there was a certain unstable quality that the Doctor was familiar with. "Get _away_ from me."

The Doctor inhaled deeply, and shoved himself away from the doorframe, planting his hands in his trouser pockets.

"Fine. I will." He started walking away again, but paused after only a few steps. "I'll be in the main console room."

He didn't add 'if you need me'. He knew exactly what kind of reception that would incur – probably something potentially dangerous thrown at his head, if one took in the state of the room as it was – and he didn't like the connotations anyway. He might be the Master's friend, and he might be his Doctor, but he wasn't the man's medic.

Now, as he wandered back into the room with the console and the seat and the coral pillars, the place of so many, many memories for this regeneration and the last, of Rose and Martha and Donna, he sighed as he set the coordinates for his next destination. It was time to reap his reward.

...

AN: The first of what I hope becomes a small set of short stories set between the Doctor first taking the Master into the TARDIS and the Doctor's regeneration. If the inspiration hits me over the head at some point, I may – may – write the scene in which the Master falls unconscious. Because the Master doesn't faint. :D

I think it's interesting to see how they change in the AU, and how far everything verges from canon so quickly and yet also how it should still be so easily recognisable as them, which is why I wrote this and the other EoT bit in the first place.


	8. Out Of Context

And Then There Was Silence

Out Of Context – Martha, part 2.

...

Martha stared – she couldn't help it. She was tempted just to give up the pretence of being unaffected and laugh.

The scene in front of her was as surreal as anything she'd ever seen with the Doctor, and that included a lot of things. There was the Doctor himself, grinning like an idiot in his tweed and bowtie as Saxon – the Master! – came back out of the TARDIS, pulling on an oversized black hoodie over a red crew necked t-shirt and black jeans. The only things that had stayed the same were his hair and boots, and even they weren't the same as the last time she'd seen him.

She was suddenly but not completely unexpectedly treated to a friendly nudge in the side from Amy.

"Never seen the guy dress down before, have you?"

"Never," she admitted. "In all the time I've known him, he's always been in a suit."

"Really? He was worse than this the first time I saw him."

"_Worse_? I'm finding it hard enough to believe my eyes right now, let alone imagine anything worse."

"Try ripped, scorched and drenched," the redhead came back.

"No," Martha said in disbelief.

"It was unfortunately unavoidable," came the dry, unamused voice of the man they had been talking about, uncomfortably close to Martha's ear. She stiffened instinctively, but Amy, unaffected, started grinning.

"Because of the crashing thing," she said, to Martha's continued amazement.

The Master moved slightly, just enough so that she could see him properly, and there was a flash of something copper-gold and silver which looked suspiciously familiar which disappeared into the depths of one of the man's pockets a fraction of an instant later.

He sent a withering look Amy's way. "Yes, Pond. Because of the crashing thing." His attention strayed to Martha, and the look turned cold. "Enjoying this, are you?"

She drew herself up to look him in the face before answering.

"It's certainly not what I'm used to."

"It's not what I prefer. I'd be more than happy to go back to the way you remember me – after we've dealt with this particular problem, that is, if you don't mind."

Martha paled at the mere suggestion, and was about to bite something back, but the Doctor thankfully beat her to it.

"That's quite enough of that, people. No more threatening, please. Amy, you go with him, Martha, you're with me.

Martha felt relief flood her, and gave the Doctor a smile that hardly began to convey her gratitude. She felt even better when the Master left her, heading over to where the Doctor was a mere few paces away, close enough so that she could clearly hear what they were saying.

"I still say that you should have been the one saddled with the redhead. You chose her, not me."

"Give me one good reason why I should have trusted you with Martha."

"Hmm..." went the Master, putting on a show of having to think. "Were you after the reassuring answers, or the outright lies?"

The Doctor sighed, and dragged a hand through his hair.

"Now, this? This is why you don't get nice things."

...

AN: Done somewhat for the person who asked for more stuff like this, who reviewed unsigned. Originally, this was going to be a scene with just Martha and the Doctor, but then I thought of what her reaction to the hoodie would be, and this idea demanded to come first. The other one is going to appear, though. At some point.


	9. Echoes of Could Have Beens

And Then There Was Silence

Echoes of Never Were

AN: Set during the time during 'The Big Bang' in which the Doctor isn't.

...

When he was young, younger even than the drums hand been able to reach, back when he had been living in his family's old home on the slopes of Mount Perdition, he had sometimes left the watchful eyes of Oakdown to go to the fields and the grasslands to run. He didn't know why. Sometimes there would be a reason, but more often than not he simply felt compelled to run, run and lean into the wind of displaced air about him. Sometimes, he would let his imagination stray as he lay on his back, looking up at the burnt orange sky of sunsset, and he could almost feel another's fingertips against his, their fingertips brushing, arms outstretched.

And then the cool Gallifreyan winds would blow, red grass brushing against his skin, and the whispers on the wind were his family, wondering where he was.

...

Upon starting at the Academy, it was quickly and easily discovered that he was one of Prydon's most promising student. Attention was lavished onto him, and he flourished under it. Naturally, he was drawn towards those who were as intelligent, if not more so, than he. Equals, those with greater aspirations and ambitions.

But no one ever mentioned the empty seat in the classrooms of the Academy. Each class, without fail, almost always in the same place. No one looked at it, eyes slid over it.

There was someone missing. No one discussed it, but as time went on it became clearer and clearer to the Time Lords of the Academy and, as they grew more learned, the students themselves, that there was a person shaped hole in the fabric of time and space. It was brushed to the side by the professors – in their minds, whatever had happened could not have affected the timelines too seriously, as there were no paradoxes, and events seemed to be moving forward with their usual functionality.

But for the Oakdown boy and his friends, things were a little more noticeably strange.

Events would flow by with the group of nine hardly even noticing some days, while others found them receiving punishments for which they could not clearly remember getting into trouble for.

...

Koschei.

It was the name he'd chosen for himself in his first days at the Academy, and it was a symbol of his ambition.

Koschei the Deathless, he had discovered, was a known figure of folk tale on some parts of Sol Three, in Mutter's Spiral. Deathless, because of how hard it apparently was to kill the infamous villain.

The idea intrigued him. Everyone knew that everyone worshipped heroes, and honoured their gods or beliefs. Even the Time Lords looked up to their founders, to Rassilon and Omega and the Other, and some believed in Time herself.

But here, here was an example of someone other than the hero being remembered – _immortalised_, even. Where those the stories focused on were merely foils, and some of the familiar clichés were upturned.

He wanted that. The recognition, the fame – no, the infamy. Because when one couldn't reach the top, when you missed the mark of 'hero', the one everyone wanted, then sometimes you had to settle for being a villain.

Every so often he'd look back on that thought and wondered when exactly he'd started thinking that there was anyone even remotely near his level for him to compare himself to.

And then, he'd wonder why he'd taken its meaning from Sol Three, Mutter's Spiral in the first place.

...

Over the next few centuries, he rose up in the ranks of the Time Lords, gaining a contradictory reputation for his meticulous methods and rebellious, often cruel, nature. There were scant few people who would call themselves his friend, and not many more who would list themselves as allies.

But despite this, he commanded a certain amount of wary respect. After all, he was the one who now used the title of 'Master' instead of any normally accepted type of name or descriptive.

As a result, he ended up being elected twice. The first time, he was stood down for various reasons, the second – he ran, left, escaped, and breathed for what felt like the first time in his life.

As the years went past, events flew by and every so often, it would be painfully obvious that something was missing. News abounded with seemingly random happenings – people would disappear from their homes, but be reported to have been seen in various points in time and space. Wars would be nipped in the bud in some places, while in others a revolution would strike without warning, upturning a town, a country's, an entire world's rule in a matter of days or even hours.

But the strangest thing of all was that, every so often, he would find himself in a . . . situation, and he couldn't quite come up with an adequate explanation at any of those such times for the life of him.

...

The War came – the Time War, great and terrible thing that it was, making monsters out of normally placid Time Lords and cowards out of monsters.

From the moment he was brought back into existence, his world was confusion. There were far, far too many blank and missing areas of his life, n all of his lives. There was something wrong – wrong with _him_.

And it wasn't simply the drums, his own personal madness that followed him from regeneration to regeneration, through death and the matrix itself. The drums were bad, and growing worse and worse and the war went on, pounding in his head a steady beat of _one-two-three-four!_ that drove him insane and only quieted for moments, and only then at the price of lives, and it didn't matter if they were Dalek or Time Lord. But they were just there, and had been since his initiation in front of the Untempered Schism at the age of eight.

When he thought about it, when his mind was clear enough, not driven by the drumming or assaulted with the knowledge of what he was facing and what he was doing for a moment's peace, he knew. He knew, and he wished he didn't know.

The feeling had been there ever since before he turned eight.

So when the Dalek Emperor turned his eyes on the Cruciform, he didn't think twice – he _ran_.

...

The circumstances behind his de-fobwatching and rescue from being forced to live out the rest of his days as a doddering old fool of a professor burdened with a worthless slip of an insectoid female were hazy at best.

The drums were easier to deal with than they had been during the war, but by no means any less maddening. Twenty-first century Earth had plenty to offer as distraction, though. The _music_, the _television_ – cartoons! All designed to catch the eye of the unwary and unsuspecting, to persuade, empower, demean and dominate. It gave him ideas.

The persona of Harold Saxon had almost created himself. It was an easy enough thing to do to give someone - or a group of people – the idea that Harry Saxon was a smart, charming young man, and all he needed then was to leave the rest to their small yet imaginative human brains.

They had known him for years, and he did so well at this, an at that, and he had a wife – wasn't _she_ pretty, wasn't she _lucky_ – such a nice man, someone you could _trust_.

It was funny, really. Wasn't it? Wasn't it _hilarious_?

The number of times he would lie awake in bed, pretending to be asleep, putting on a show, trapped on Earth, trapped by the drums and trapped in his own thoughts.

He'd drum out the beat again and again, again and again, but all it would do was to make his head ache worse than before, and remind him of his hearts drumming – _da-da-da-dum!_ as he ran, ran, ran and ran for his life, all of his lives.

He'd look into the eyes of his creations, his servants, the ones who didn't even realise yet that they were completely enslaved to him, and in them he would find reflected that most hated, badly buried, part of himself.

...

The year that should never have been became the year that never was, and far from becoming another opportunity, it simply became yet another failure, and another event in his life that made no sense – in fact, the only thing of it all that had not surprised him completely had been the means to his end.

_Lucy_. Dear, _sweet_ Lucy. Dressed in red, she'd been decked in diamonds, and had stopped believing. A shame, but he should have expected it really. The light always dimmed and died – all lights died, even the shining ones, and sweet Lucy had long since lost her shine even before he had first met her.

Not that it mattered. After all, it wasn't as though death had any true hold on him.

He was brought back out of the dark by his cult, mindless but useful.

It did (didn't) work. Lucy, hardened by prison for killing him Lucy, wasn't (was) there. He was fine (hungry, always hungry) and clever, so very, very clever, and _everyone_. Every single person (except Wilf, and Donna, and the non-humans). He brought the Time Lords back – up until then, he'd been the last (second to last) one left alive. With Rassilon himself at their head and Gallifrey rising, to back –

Until the truth came out, and he'd been used and abused and called diseased.

They should have known. How, exactly, could they have not known, not understood? If they had, they would never have dared say that. Not that, not to him, not ever.

You never, ever, damaged his pride.

Not when it was all he had (left).

_One. Two. Three. Four._

There was nothing to keep him back.

Dragged in, into the Time Lock, back to the War, stifled, suffocated, chocked but still alive, and had it been days, weeks, months, years or even just hours that he'd been there?

_Run. Run. Red grass, Mount Perdition. Run._

A voice in his head, whispering and coercing with tidbits of nonexistent memory. His drums gone and with nothing to drown out its persistence, it was hard to ignore.

_Red light, wheezing sound, going, going, going to be gone, lean in close and –_

_Run_.

He ran. Just like the last time, almost as though he'd had a dry run, in preparation.

Ran, and never looked back.

...

The Silver Devastation was exactly as the name depicted – a vast expanse of space turned silver by the mass of radiation, dust, debris and shrapnel left over from the War.

The Master stayed firmly within the vicinity of the ship he'd used to get there – a planet in the Devastation, and not much more than a moon with atmosphere and very little else, covered in varying amounts of glassy sand which glowed and glittered as the light struck it, beautiful and deadly at the same time.

A few miles in the opposite direction would find him at the site of the dead TARDIS which had taken him there the first time, a cold and silent piece of machinery now, that had done its job in getting him there the first time and was of no use to him any more. Not after he'd cannibalised it for parts in order to construct a working TARDIS and Time Lord homing beacon, that is.

Even then, the wait had been interminable. By the time the time the materialisation noises of the last remaining TARDIS in existence could be heard, the wheezing had become the most wonderful sound he'd ever hoped to hear.

Then the familiar Police Box could be clearly seen, and a moment later the doors opened, and out stepped the Doctor himself, still dressed in the raggedy, blasted clothes he'd seen the other Time Lord in last, and looking around, countenance harried and worried.

It was the work of seconds for the Master to stride over, and less to land a fist to his face, sending the Doctor sprawling backwards with a hand going to where he'd been hit.

"Ow, ow. What was that for?"

"That," the Master said, shaking out his hand, "Was because you took your bloody time!"

The Doctor poked gingerly at the place where he'd shortly be getting a rather pretty bruise, if the Master's hopes weren't unfounded, and winced.

"I'd been erased from existence! I didn't even exist until a few days ago, and do you know _how_ hard it was for me to find you?"

"Hard enough, apparently," came the snide reply.

There was an uncomfortable silence, in which the Master glared hatefully and the Doctor stared back, looking for all the world like a kicked dog, which was the first thing about the whole situation that made him want to smile – it brought back good memories.

It was he who broke off the impasse first, with a sniff of his upturned nose, to go and dismantle the distress beacon by kicking out at it and smashing it against the often sharp sand, since there was no use for it any more. After that, he went back to the blue box, ignoring the Doctor's concerned expression as he went through the doors and straight off towards the rooms the TARDIS had grudgingly given over for him to use.

The doors shut behind him, the controls were set and the machine in motion once more moments after.

"You know," came the Doctor's voice once they were in flight, "when we land, we're going to be right in the middle of Amy and Rory's wedding."

"Another good reason why I'm changing into something _reasonable_."

"Oh, I don't know. I always did think red looked good on you. And I _distinctly_ remember you saying once – oh, what was it? Yes. 'I always dress for the occasion'."

"Oh, you're really enjoying this, aren't you? What is this, payback?"

"I'm keeping the robes," the Doctor said, an almost lost sound of truly serious mischief that the Master couldn't believe he might once have missed.

A set of slightly messed up Prydonian chapter Time Lord robes were tossed outside of the door, falling to a disgraceful heap at the Doctor's feet.

"... Tell anyone where you got them or who – bring this up _ever again_, and I swear that your little pets will have to get used to what the word 'regeneration' means. Do you _understand_ me?"

He didn't get an answer. The Doctor had already wandered off.

...

AN: This is the alternate timeline mentioned in chapter five, in which there is a Doctor-shaped hole in the fabric of time and space. Which ends up appearing in rather embarrassing places wherever the Master is concerned.

Noteworthy for the fact that it's the longest short I've done for this verse so far, and was all handwritten out in my notepad first.

My favourite scene is the first, and the first few pages were incidentally written up around Halloween time, which was weird, since it kind of is creepy. Like the opposite of data ghosts.


	10. Radio Talk

And Then There Was Silence

Radio Talk

AN: Set during a certain scene of The Lodger.

...

The Doctor bounced back onto the bed in the spare room, relishing the strange novelty of the springs and the fact that it was a bed in a room in a house, instead of his room in the TARDIS.

His thoughts wandering back to the old girl, he fiddled with the device in his ear.

"Hello? Amy – Master? Can you hear me?"

Everything was clear, but the unmistakable sound of someone faking radio static reached him.

"Reading you loud and clear, Theta Sigma, this is your Master speaking. Is everything clear on your end?"

The Doctor sat bolt upright, almost unable to believe what he'd just heard. He almost didn't hear what were clearly Amy's giggles at the Master's antics.

"_What_ did you say?"

There was a muttered 'Oh, for...' before he got a proper reply.

"Radio speak, you idiot."

"Right," said the Doctor, still somewhat shocked and bemused. "_Right_. You do realise that the line between me and you on the TARDIS is completely secure, don't you?"

"What? I thought it'd be fun. I only wish I could've seen the look on your face as well!"

"Yes. Well. The next time you feel like doing that, I'll consider taking us to medieval Russia."

There was a rush of noise in which the Master protested loudly and Amy was confused.

"Hang on, hang on – what's _Russia_ got to do with anything?"

The Doctor leaned back again, and sent Amy a quick grin despite knowing that she wouldn't be able to see it.

"Payback, Pond. Payback."

More silence on the line, and the next person to speak was the Master himself, voice full of hate.

"You're evil. You're _evil_, and I hate you."

...

AN: For anyone who's got this far and still doesn't know, Theta Sigma was the Doctor's nickname during his Academy years on Gallifrey as he and the Master were growing up. The Master's nickname during this time (as shown in the previous chapter) was Koschei, a villain character in Russian folklore.

I'd actually wanted to write something along these lines ever since I first found out about there being an episode planned that would separate the Doctor from the TARDIS, in which he'd be a lodger. I later found out that they wouldn't _need_ to code their messages, but I still wanted to write out the idea.

Radio talk does have some greek letters in it, but no Theta or Sigma.


	11. Rules of the Game

And Then There Was Silence

Rules of the Game

AN: Set between Victory of the Daleks and the Time of Angels.

...

The Doctor and the Master were arguing again when Amy strolled back into the main console room, going at it hammer and tongs.

"Nineteen sixty-nine, Doctor. It's not that much to ask, is it?"

"No – yes! I've already been in nineteen sixty-nine!"

"Oh, come _on_. You don't own the rights to an entire year just because you've had a trip or two there."

"I was then more than just once or twice – and besides, the last time was only a few years ago."

"Does that even matter?" The Master leaned forward, resting a hand on the console – but it came away quickly when the old girl shocked him. He scowled and continued. "_Riots_. Revolution!" he said, a fire lighting in his eyes at the words.

"And Martha Jones."

"And- what? Is that _it_? And you haven't once thought about just avoiding her?"

Amy rolled her eyes. "_Really_, boys," she said, finally interrupting them. "Can't you ever agree on _anything_?" She put a hand on her hip. "Without someone's life being in danger?"

They both turned to stare at her.

Several hours and more than a little cajoling on her part later, and the three of them were in nineteen sixty-nine Edinburgh, playing a rather interesting game of scrabble in the Castle itself, the TARDIS in the next room along.

Amy was having fun despite the fact that she was losing abysmally next to the two stupidly smart Time Lords. She was able to watch them, and tell them when she thought that the words going onto the board weren't exactly in the English Dictionary.

The Doctor was, not unsurprisingly, doing very well, with a mixture of ordinary and just plain weird words finding their ways onto the board. Some of the latter had at first been protested against by Amy as they didn't seem to be anything other than the Doctor making things up again.

A fair few, however, had her arguing against both Time Lords, as they said that while said words might not be around yet in her time, they would be in _an_ English Dictionary – and in use – at some point in the future. Or the past.

After one such nonsensical word that they both agreed with all seriousness _was_ a word, she simply gave up.

It was only when the board was nearly full that the Master put down a certain few tiles that he'd been saving on the side to spell 'decimation'. The Doctor glared, and it took Amy a minute or so to figure out why – and when she did she sighed and rolled her eyes again with a laugh – most of the letters he'd used that were already on the board had been put there by the Doctor.

"That's the way we play the game, Pond," the blond said as he tuned the radio on to current news. "He expends all of his time and energy on grandiose plans against me, and then I end up turning it all back on him in the end after all his hard work."

"I think you'll find," the Doctor retorted, "that you've got it the wrong way around."

"Ah," said the Master with a cheeky, smug grin. "But I still _win_."

...

AN: I can't decide whether it's before or after the Martha plot. But it's before the Master's laser screwdriver v.2 was completed.

I don't know how I feel about this one. But I thought I'd post it up anyway, because it just seemed like one of those adventures they often talk about, but where nothing much actually happens. And also, scrabble. In Edinburgh Castle. In 1969.


	12. It's Only Forever, It's Not Long At All

And Then There Was Silence

It's Only Forever, That's Not Long At All

AN: Because this fic needed more Rory. Set after Vampires of Venice, but before Amy's Choice.

...

It was the Tuesday after he'd first joined Amy, the Doctor, and the 'Master' on the trans-dimensional ship, and he should have known that trouble would be able to find him even inside the TARDIS.

The door was what felt like the tenth one that he'd opened in the past half hour, the previous ones opening onto box rooms, storage areas, places that looked like they should be outdoors areas complete with skies of their own, not inside a ship, and oh, more corridors.

He hadn't thought anything of the tapping that had been coming from behind the door – for all he knew, it could have been a constant feature of the room.

It hadn't been, of course. From the moment he opened the door and looked inside, he came face to face with the sight of the Master, sat hunched up on the room's small sofa with his knees to his chest, laser screwdriver in one hand and tapping a continuous four-beat pattern with the other. At first, he seemed so caught up in his finger drumming that he didn't even realise that Rory was there, wishing he hadn't opened the door at all.

But then the Time Lord's eyes snapped open, and Rory was rooted to the spot, half in the doorway and half out, held in place not by any sort of compulsion – at least, he didn't think so – but simply by the unstable look in the alien's eyes.

The drumming didn't stop.

The Master's expression cleared, flittered through neutral, angry and – for just an instant – nervous, for some reason, before settling on a brittle kind of cheery facade.

"Curiosity got the better of you, did it?"

Rory frowned.

"I didn't mean to intrude."

"Oh, no, but you did anyway, didn't you? Never mind. Lost, aren't you?"

Unwanted, the image of the wolf appearing to Red Riding Hood sprung to mind. Never mind that the Master could quite easily play both roles, what with how his other outfit included a hood that he nearly always kept up if they ever went back to Earth's present day.

He wasn't wearing the hoodie now, though. No, he was back in the sharp black suit and tie with the pristine white shirt, except this time they weren't quite so sharp. Probably from all that sitting in strange positions, all curled up like that.

"No. I know where I'm going."

"But you don't know how to get there," the Master said with a sing-song. "You can _research_ what it might be like as much as you want. You can read up on all the latest _theories_ in your science journals. But it's never enough to prepare you for the real thing, is it?" By the end, the Master's expression had turned cold, tense.

"Well, no," Rory said, taken aback, "but at least I had something to go on. You know, not completely in the dark..."

"But it's not enough," said the Master, growing more intense. He'd noticed that the man was still drumming, grip on the gold-and-silver laser device tightening and loosening. Rory backed up a pace. Just one, but he was that much close to being out of the doorway and back in the corridor. The safe corridor. "It's never enough, _never_ is. You can wonder and you can imagine all you like, but it's _never_ going to prepare you for the _reality_."

A stray whisp of thought crossed Rory's mind, a memory of him and Amy as they were still growing up and when Amy still played her games, of Amy – Amelia, back then – telling him to jump into large boxes and hide in sheds. They never had been as big as she'd said that they should be, but then again, neither of them had expected them to be until the Doctor himself came with his TARDIS.

"I – yeah," he said, giving in on that one. Even though he knew they were both talking about completely different things, somehow or other. "Maybe you could help me with that, then. I was trying to find the library."

The Master laughed, throwing his head back and not sounding entirely sane – not that he'd been being entirely sane before, either, though.

"For the pool or the books?"

Rory blinked.

"Books. I was wondering if I could-"

The Master cut him off, rattling off a chain of directions with a very few stops and hesitations which Rory took note of. He was pretty certain that the Master had only told him the way in order to get rid of him, but other than that, and he could have just been told how to go somewhere dangerous or off limits, and he wouldn't even know.

Rory thanked him politely, and made a hasty retreat. But before he'd made even a few short paces, the Time Lord called out to him, again in that cheery voice, but this time it sounded more like he just wanted to be annoying and freak the human out more than anything.

"You do know there's something weird about your girlfriend, don't you?"

Rory stopped stock still, and turned back around but didn't go all the way back there.

"I don't care what you say," he said coldly. "And she's my fiancée, not my girlfriend."

He walked off, and it wasn't too much longer before he did find the library. It might or might not have been the one Amy had told him about when they were kids, because this one didn't have a pool in it.

...

AN: Ooh, thought it'd be shorter than this. And I am exceptionally tired. I guess it helped in writing the Master here, though. Um, please tell me what you thought of my Rory. The only line of his I actually like is the last one.

This came about because one, I'd been trying to think of something for Rory to do, and two, because there hadn't been enough scenes showing just how unstable the Master really _is_ in this verse. There are still a couple planned that are canon expansions, but this is more original and gave me more leeway as to what I could do. Bonus points if you know where the title's from.


	13. Comfortably Numb

And Then There Was Silence

End of Time part 3 – Comfortably Numb

AN: It may say part three, but this actually is the starting event that kicks off the whole AU. Written because some readers have been confused.

...

"_One! Two! Three! Four!"_

With each number, each beat that they'd drummed into his head, he forced out his life energy, lightning strikes aimed straight at the Lord President.

"You did this to me!" And another, as he shouted over Gallifrey's fall. "You made me like this!"

Stepping forward again, switching hands, each strike brought him closer to the Time Lords, further from Earth and back into the clutches of the Time War itself.

He grinned as the elder Time Lord flinched from the onslaught – a small victory, granted, but it was there, and he'd won it – and was about to follow through with another when, startled and angry and with just a little fear, he was thrown off his feet, hurled backward by a single blast from the glove that Rassilon wore, now pointing directly at him, the man's hardened face cracked with what looked suspiciously like fear for his own survival.

The Master smirked widely, with smug superiority, brought himself back up from the floor, buoyed by the adrenaline and success, making his hearts go faster as he rubbed his hands together in order to bring out one more – just one more blow – but nothing. He tried again, but still nothing.

He screamed in frustration, not hearing the Doctor shout for him to stay back as the Time Lords were dragged back into the War once more, fading out of this time and space, trapped for real this time and no way back. Locked away, for good. Gallifrey falling.

Continuing forwards, he only fade a couple of steps before falling down again, the fault of now suddenly weak and exhausted legs, muscles not responding even as the drums beat a rapid pulse in his ears, not giving in, never abating, the noise that would never end, not even now. He brought his hands to his head at the injustice – for a few glorious minutes, they'd been dampened, made bearable compared to the past few days, even the past few years, by the return of his people and Gallifrey. And now, back to this.

He just sat there, limp on the glass-ridden floor – and he could blame the Doctor for that, too – and sought to block the rest of the world out. Made no effort to move, why should he, when it would only show how weak he was? Simply moaned quietly and waited for the drums to fade, not that they ever did. With any luck, they'd get so bad that he could lose himself, maybe forget, destroy, and show the world just how _diseased_ he could be.

And then they went faster, his hearts skipping a beat or two. The drums of insanity only ever went louder, or, if there was an appeasing amount of violence, softer, quieter, for a short time. But they never changed in tempo. Never faster, never slower, always keeping perfect time.

For the first time since Rassilon had struck out at him with the Glove, since Gallifrey had gone back into its own place, he _listened_.

His pulse. He could hear – feel, his own heartsbeats thudding in his ears. There was an echo of the drums that had been in his head for so long, but they were fading, interminably slowly, and almost imperceptibly. But they were, and while he was thankful to know that they were going to be that much less than the painful, it was an obvious conclusion that it would eventually reach a painful quiet.

He wasn't quite sure what he'd do when it got to that point, but he'd deal with it when it happened.

He was free.

A cruel smile drew itself across his face as he contemplated this new, welcome thought.

Free. He hadn't been truly free since he'd been eight years old and naive.

He ignored the voice – small, so small, unheard over the drums in so, so long – that said that he wouldn't know what to do if he was free, no prisoner ever did.

He could do what he liked – mental capacities running on full – and he could already feel the hunger that had been his driving force ever since he'd been resurrected abated to a bone-deep feeling of starvation instead of an instinctual, primal _need_.

He laughed. They thought that they had stranded him, did they? Well, it wouldn't be for long. He'd find a way to get them back, to make them feel just as he had for the past millennia, all because of _him_.

And then the door to the radiation chamber clicked shut, and irony added itself to his list of reasons to laugh at the universe.

...

AN: Not entirely pleased with this, but it does explain things to an extent, I hope.


	14. Misplaced

And Then There Was Silence

Misplaced

AN: This chapter was originally going to be almost completely different by way of the plot going in a slightly different direction for the Master here (originally, he'd been stuck in the TARDIS with River as it exploded). However, this change came about by someone on the DeviantArt DWKM wanting to see 'Any Master finds the Pandorica while the Doctor's still inside'. This scene immediately popped into my head.

...

The Master glared at the massive black box that held the Doctor inside. The box looked back, expressionless, cold and unfeeling.

This only incensed the Time Lord further, his arm lashing out to hit it, uncaring that the box felt no pain, that it caused him considerably more, and that it didn't achieve anything. It made him feel better, not by much perhaps, but better.

It should have been him. _It_ _should have been me_.

Not out of some sort of misplaced guilt, oh no. He wasn't self-sacrificial just because he hadn't been there, having been shut out of the TARDIS before he could get even a foot into the door to get inside after that Song woman and forced to ride back to Stonehenge and the Pandorica. By the time he had made it back, everything had already happened. But it wasn't that.

_There was a goblin, or a trickster, or a warrior... A nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies. The most feared being in all the cosmos. And nothing could stop it, or hold it, or reason with it. One day it would just drop out of the sky and tear down your world_.

Always the Doctor. The Oncoming Storm, the Destroyer of worlds, terrible names of power. The ungrateful Doctor hadn't asked for any of them, never worked for it, but they had been given to him all the same.

It should have been him. He, the Master, the one they feared and deferred to, the one expected to be capable of destroying the world and Time itself. He almost had, once.

He hit the Pandorica again, and more brief pain lanced up his arm from his knuckles, which had glanced off the black prison.

The Doctor had always had it easy, never taken anything seriously, never actually listened. It had always come naturally, moulding the universe in his image, and no one had ever bothered to speak out against it. They never saw anything wrong.

There was a certain amount of irony to it, he mused caustically. Perhaps saving – or at least appearing to save – a few systems would be worth the needless effort. Mindlessly loyal servants without the need for mind control. A reputation for being dangerous and destructive without people overthrowing him or trying to make him change into something he wasn't.

It was so simple, he laughed at it. The sound reverberated around the Underhenge, echoing off of the walls and the Pandorica itself.

In order to become truly respected and feared and served, all he had to do was become the Doctor.


	15. Halfway Out of the Dark

And Then There Was Silence

Halfway Out of the

AN: It took me ages to figure out what to do with the Master re Christmas Carol. And then, however long it was after the episode aired, it clicked.

...

The TARDIS door opened, and in came the Doctor, predictably – given his excitement and earlier statement upon first looking out of the doors – covered in soot and snow.

There was, however, a determined look that the Master was rather familiar with, as he was certain that it had been sent his way a fair few times, or at the very least that he had been the cause of it. He raised an interested, speculative eyebrow.

"Ran into trouble, did you?"

The Doctor spun to look at him properly, apparently having been startled by his presence in the TARDIS again somehow.

"A, yes. There was a bit. Of trouble. Well, I _say_ trouble, I mean what's possibly the beginning of something rather exciting, fun, and definitely worth it..."

The Master stared, and started to smirk.

"They're going to crash," he stated, amused.

"What? No! No, no, no. No one's going to die. Not if I can help it. Not if they don't have to. No, see, what you don't realise is that I've got a plan."

"A cunning plan?"

"Yes- what? No, well, sort of."

He smiled, although there was a sharpness to it that put the Doctor on edge. Even after this long living in the same space and, in essentials, _working_ together for the most part, there was still a sense of distrust between them brought about by approximately a thousand years (give or take a couple of centuries on either side) of hatred and betrayal. Not that the Master would have it any other way, of course.

"I'd like to know whether or not you were counting on me being a part of said plan at any stage of its undertaking. Because I thought you might like to know in advance – the answer would be no."

The Doctor – who had wandered over to the console and started putting in coordinates – bounded back over to the Master, doing that thing of his where he was somehow able to get right into someone's personal space, just so, lifting himself up on the balls of his feet slightly and looking down his nose at the Master's face and into his eyes.

Not that he needed to make himself taller. The fact that he was still shorter than the Doctor was something that irked him to no end, especially when the Doctor looked that much younger than he ever had.

"Amelia and Rory are on that ship," the Doctor said calmly and softly and in the same kind of tone that could bring down regimes. It made the hairs on the Master's neck stand on end, and in response the blond straightened his back, jutting up his chin. "I thought you liked Amy," he said in the same way, as if searching for something.

The Master laughed, genuinely amused.

" 'Like' is a strong word, don't you think? She's useful. She thinks I'm nice. Can you believe that? Me! Nice!"

They stood there like that for a few moments more, just long enough for the Master to start getting uncomfortable and cross his arms defensively with a scowl, before the Doctor backed away, back over to the console. He sent a bright grin back over as soon as the TARDIS had started to dematerialise with the familiar whooshing noise that it always made.

"There's a man who could help the ship land – there's an interesting kind of fog, and it's got fish in it, fish, that can fly, really fly! Except that he's not exactly warmed up to the idea of helping us yet-" the Master snorted, both at the obvious understatement and the use of the pronoun 'us' "-but!" The Doctor continued, as though he hadn't been interrupted. "I've got an idea, and it just might work. I think you'd like him, you know."

"Oh?" The Master drawled out snidely. "That much of a cold hearted control freak, was he?"

The Doctor gave him an inscrutable look.

"No, actually. Something else," he muttered. "Halfway out of the dark," came the soft phrase, aimed more at the time rotor than the Master himself, who glared at the implication, but didn't say anything, not trusting his words.

...

Some inordinate time later, the Master was brought out of his ennui by the TARDIS door being knocked open, and the Doctor backing in. He was followed by two people and what looked suspiciously like a shark in a cryogenic chamber. The closest person was a blonde woman in a white dress, and the other was a young boy in pyjamas and a dressing gown.

It took the two newcomers a moment to realise that they and the Doctor weren't the only ones in the time-space ship, and as soon as they did, they stared at him, the boy – who looked around twelve – pointing a finger vaguely in his direction.

"Who's he?"

The Master raised an eyebrow aimed at the Doctor.

"Who's the kid?"

The Doctor looked between them, and clapped his hands together, obviously unnerved by something and wondering whether or not to trust him with the newest pets.

"Ah! Right, of course. You haven't met yet. Kazran, Abigail, this is the Master. Master, this is Kazran Sardick and this nice lady with the lovely voice is Abigail Pettigrew."

"Right," said the Master, dryly. He recognised the names from when the Doctor had explained events from before, but refrained from saying this. "And what's the shark doing in here?"

"The shark came out of the fog too long," explained the boy version of the grouchy old miser. The Master listened with affected patience. "And then it followed us down to the cold room, and Abigail calmed it, her, down with singing, so we were able to get her in here."

"Oh," added the Doctor, "and it's eaten my sonic screwdriver, but that's not as bad as it could be, because it only has half. See? I've got the other half right here!"

And right on cue, he brought the other half of the now broken and mostly useless sonic device out from one of his pockets as the Master looked at him in a mixture of awe and horror.

"You're insane," he said. "I always knew, but I don't think I realised quite how badly it had affected you until now." He shook his head and started to walk away. "Just to make myself understood, I'm not lending you mine. Got it?"

"Completely. Not like I'd want yours, anyway." To the other two as he closed the door behind them, he expanded upon this. "The Master is a very old friend of mine. Well, when I say friend, I mean acquaintance. Person I've known a long, long time. We know each other very well, but I sometimes wonder how well he does know me."

The two humans nodded, obviously humouring him and not completely understanding the complexities. The Doctor fiddled about a bit with the remaining piece of sonic screwdriver, then clapped his hands with a grin as he went to start putting co-ordinates in for the skies above Sardicktown.

...

AN: Whoo. Fun thing is that I came up with the first part first, the second part second, wrote the second part second and then wrote the first part second. Confused yet?

It was originally going to be longer in both, but that was when they were in my head, and stuff in my head's always a lot more ... chatty. Which wouldn't have made that much sense, really.

Oh, and I couldn't help throwing in the Blackadder reference. I don't think the Master would've been able to, either. :D


	16. The Doctor's Wife

The Doctor's Wife

AN: Submitted late because I didn't want to spoil. Specific timings may be off.

... ... ... ...

The Master smirked, resisting the urge to laugh, as the madwoman bit the Doctor, finding it a shame when she was pulled away.

The next thing he knew, his face was throbbing from the force of a sharp slap. He turned on the woman, half furious and half completely confused and unaware of her reasoning.

"What was that for?" He turned to the Doctor. "I swear, I haven't even seen her before just now."

The madwoman looked at her hand and the arm attached to it with something akin to wonder before looking up at him suddenly.

"My hand just did it. Your own fault. I've eaten you before... and spit you out, you were... bitter."

The Master leaned over to mock-whisper in the Doctor's ear.

"You know? I think she's more insane than I am!"

Rory frowned, looking between the woman and the Master. In the end, he shook his head.

"No, I think they've probably got a special ward for people like you. I don't know what they'd call it, but I'm sure it's there. Somewhere."

The Master turned a sharp grin on the Pond who'd spoken.

"Why, thank you."

"It wasn't meant to be a compliment."

"I- OW!" His right hand went hastily to cover for his left, which had, without warning, been suddenly pinched very hard, very painfully. The glare he turned on the woman increased tenfold. "What was THAT for?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said, appearing perfectly unrepentant.

...

AN: The TARDIS/Sexy is referring to the events of the TV Movie, also known as 'The Enemy Within'. AKA the one with Paul McGann, in which the Master is swallowed by the Eye of Harmony.

Credit for part of that line of hers is straight to Doctors_Friend, on livejournal. They are awesome.


	17. River, Before the Beginning

And Then... There Was Silence

River Song – Before the Beginning

AN: Someone mentioned River in a review. I'd already had something in mind for the first time the Master meets her, but then this pleaded to be let out. I am now continuing on the 'not in any particular order' part.

...

"I'm a time traveller," scoffed the Doctor. "I laugh at archaeologists."

"River Song," said River with a smirk, holding out her hand which he proceeded to shake. "Archaeologist."

There was a beat – a pause – just long enough for her to glance around, count the heads, get the general gist that someone was missing.

She opened her mouth to say something on this, but the next moment, this new Doctor was off and talking about how dangerous this place was, and how they should all be going back home. That didn't matter, though – she'd take the next chance.

"What? No sarcastic comments from the backseat driver?"

The Doctor – and the team of archaeologists that she had brought with her to the Library in the first place – looked around, and then, having found no one else, stared at her.

"What? No, no backseat driver. Well... not unless you count Donna. Which I don't," he said quickly, at the redheaded companion's dark look that promised a slap in the face if he hadn't said that she wasn't.

...

River sat, out of the shadows, near enough to the new, young Doctor that their conversation was private, her diary out and open but at the same time shielded from view. Old, and blue, and borrowed occasionally when the need arose.

She looked into his eyes, his old, bright eyes, and her heart hurt, skipping a beat in a moment of sheer hope and fear mixed in together.

He was so _young_, and she said so – he didn't believe her, of course, far too spoiled by people knowing only normal human lifespans to compare against his – but he was.

It was all there to be read in his eyes. Such hurt and pain and loneliness that he hadn't yet been able to let go of, so much that wasn't yet there. So many people he hadn't met, and adventures he hadn't been on.

"So this is what you were like before," she whispered to herself, after he'd been distracted by the ringing of a phone. "Oh, Doctor," she sighed. "What did he do to you?"

It was a rhetorical question, of course. That was the problem with time travel – the Doctor, as he was now, couldn't even answer the question, as much as she wished he could.

... ... ... ...

AN: Urf, that took longer than I thought it should.

Second. What she says? Tenses. She means 'what the Master had done to the Doctor, but also what he was going to do by the time she next met up with him in his timeline'. Or something like that. It just seems to fit.


	18. Powers of Persuasion

And Then There Was Silence

AN: Timeline-wise, during The Impossible Astronaut. There may/may not be an earlier thing for the same episode, but that would be during the café scene.

... ... ... ...

The TARDIS' engines were groaning, the Doctor and the Master up by the main console while Amy, Rory and River discussed among themselves what they'd just seen.

Something mechanical hissed above them, and the sound of the Master swearing profusely could be heard, shortly followed by the echoing of the thud of his heavy boots as he strode off in a temper yet again. River's amused smirk at his antics turned quickly into a worried frown when they realised that the frustrated Time Lord was heading straight down toward them.

"So," he said, in a deceptively cheery way, leaning languidly on the rail. "The whole gang's down here. I wonder what we're up to this time - out to stop the universe from ending again, are we? Or is it to do with the price of grain in Ganganaut? Or - ooh! - maybe it's an evil megalomaniac! That'd be fun, wouldn't it?"

River rolled her eyes, expression dark and tone kept light. "Oh, it's always got to be about you, doesn't it?"  
"Song, it's always about me. I'm the Master. It's just one of those things."  
"It's not about you this time."

"Then why aren't you telling me?"

The Master had been advancing a step for the past few moments of the conversation, punctuating his words with threat.

Amy laughed nervously, an act born more from a desire to break the quickly forming tension than from any real humour.

"You're crazy, you know that? We couldn't tell you. We can't tell the Doctor, we can't tell you. Story, end of."

"Too bad I wasn't asking you then, Pond. I'm ordering you - you will tell me what you saw!"

By the time he'd finished, his voice had started to raise, becoming mesmerical, his eyes catching Amy's, her breath catching in an effort to retain her own will, mouth betraying her-

And then his control was broken by a sharp, hard shove at his shoulder, pushing him away. He looked up, furious, only to meet the eyes of Rory Pond, who saw the Master's fury at being denied, and raised it the fury of a husband.

"I don't care who you are," he said. "You don't try that with my wife again."

For a moment, there wasn't a sound other than the Doctor's tinkering, and even that was slowing down.

"Or? What, you'll do something terrible? What could you ever think up to do to me that I haven't already done?"

"I." He paused, but it wasn't exactly a hesitation. "I don't know. But I'd think of something."

...

AN: Ooh, didn't see that coming when I started it. Yay for fierce!Rory? There could be more, I suppose, but that seemed like the best place to stop.


End file.
